


Beneath the Singing Stars

by LoWritesThings



Series: Claudeleth Week July 2020 [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Grieving, Pre-Relationship, Stars, mild pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:15:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25385884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoWritesThings/pseuds/LoWritesThings
Summary: Byleth just wants to grieve alone in the wake of Jeralt's death...but of course Claude can't let that happen.Written for Claudeleth Week Day One: Comfort/Stars
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: Claudeleth Week July 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838515
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50
Collections: Claudeleth Week 2020





	Beneath the Singing Stars

Byleth sits at her father’s desk and lays her head down against its cool surface. Her eyes are painfully swollen and she feels a kind of exhaustion she’s never known before, not even after one of Jeralt’s legendary forced marches. Those had tested her body’s endurance. This...this grieving, this blank pit of sadness...it seems to suck the energy out of the very marrow of her bones.

Nothing matters. Days have passed, or at least she thinks days have passed, but she just can’t find it within herself to care. So what if the days are passing? There’s a gaping hole in her and it demands all of her attention, all of her thought. What does she care of lessons or mealtimes or missions or whatever the hell else it is that Lady Rhea wants from her? Even Sothis is subdued, sometimes offering to listen but mostly just silent, keeping to herself at the back of Byleth’s mind.

It is consuming her. She knows she shouldn’t let it...but even that thought fades away. Jeralt is all she can think of. His name echoing in her brain chases away all other thought, and the hours slip away again.

She surfaces long enough to think she should read his diary. Maybe his words will soothe the ache in her chest. But then she remembers that she’d let Claude take it. He’d said something about studying it. It had seemed important at the time, but now she regrets letting him have it. Without it, all she’s got of Jeralt is the ring he’d left her, and that only reminds her that both of her parents are gone and she is alone in the world.

Footsteps approach but she ignores them until someone enters the room. She bristles, not wanting anyone else in this space that was her father’s. Not yet.

“Teach.” Claude’s voice is soft. There’s something in it--not pity, she thinks, but something adjacent to it...empathy, perhaps? Sothis hums in recognition, stirring as Byleth does to look up at her student. He’s looking back, his green eyes solemn for once and she thinks sincere, although it can be hard to tell with him even after six months.

The silence stretches. Does he need her to say something? She can’t think of anything. Her mouth opens and then shuts, and suddenly her head feels too heavy to hold up. She’s just about to lower it back down to the desktop again when his fingers reach out and trace over her cheek. There are calluses from his bowstring, though they’re not as rough as she might have guessed. They smell faintly of some sort of herbal concoction, perhaps medicinal, and it’s a green and pleasant scent that filters through the fog surrounding her brain.

“You’ve got a crease on your cheek,” he tells her, tracing the line of it across her face. “Probably from sleeping on a desk. C’mon, you could use a bit of rest in a bed. You’ve been here for two nights. I’m sure your body won’t thank you for it.”

“I’ve slept in worse places,” she says, not because he’s wrong but because she can’t think of anything else to say. He smiles a little, a fleeting thing that disappears all too soon.

“I won’t take no for an answer, Teach,” he insists, but gently, and Byleth slowly pulls herself to her feet. His hand comes to her elbow. Normally she’d bristle and remind him she doesn’t need his help to _stand up_ of all things, but she’s too tired to protest. Besides, her skin warms under his touch and she realizes suddenly that she’s quite cold, that she’s probably been cold for a while. It’s too nice to pull away.

The hallway is blessedly quiet, and after a quick trip down the stairs outside the audience chamber, they’re stepping out into the fresh air. She takes in a deep breath, her first in days, and registers with some surprise that it’s the dead of night.

“The storm blew out a few hours ago,” Claude told her. “It’s been raining since...well. _Since_. But it’s finally stopped. And look.”

He gestures upward and she knows what he means. Above them, the night sky is a carpet of diamonds. There is a staggering amount of stars all shining down on them, almost seeming to dance up there in the dark. But beautiful as they are, they seem cold and distant to Byleth and she takes no comfort from them.

She turns and starts to drag her feet toward her quarters. Claude comes with her, uncharacteristically silent and contemplative. She can tell she’s worrying him. That breaks through her melancholy for a moment--she doesn’t want to worry him. She doesn’t want to worry any of her students, of course, but the concern in Claude’s eyes is especially piercing and she wants to wipe it away...she just doesn’t know how.

“Would you...come with me for a moment, my friend?” he asks, stopping her with a gentle pressure from the guiding hand on her elbow.

_I just want to sleep,_ she thinks. Or is that Sothis? So hard to tell sometimes. She nods anyway, because maybe this is how she’ll get him to stop worrying about her.

He leads her to the cathedral, drawing her through the cavernous space until he reaches a small chapel alcove. There he finds a hidden door, and behind that door a stairway that curls up and up and up, and Byleth is truly regretting her decision to follow him now. Two nights sleeping in a chair have left her back feeling achy and her legs weak. But just as she’s about to say that this will have to wait for another night, a door appears on a landing just above them. And when Claude pushes it open, they emerge into another world.

They’re almost higher than any other point in the monastery. The Goddess Tower is taller, but not by much, and it's highest chamber is enclosed by a roof. Up here there’s nothing above them but the heavens, and they stretch vast over the rooftop. She feels as though they’ve climbed up into the sky; even the stars seem closer from this vantage point, and perhaps they’re not as cold as she’d thought.

Claude leads her to a flat spot on the roof, helping her navigate the ornate carvings and slippery tiles. Then he sweeps off his Academy issued jacket and spreads it over the small space to keep them relatively dry. He’s left in just his yellow undershirt, but if he’s cold he says nothing. He only gestures for her to sit. Then he joins her.

“Tell me you’re fine, and I’ll stop pestering you,” he says in a soft voice. He sounds utterly sincere, and this is so rare that her chest warms as it always does when he reveals that he’s coming to trust her. His eyes flick to her face, and she knows she should say the words. It should be so simple, there are just two of them: _I’m fine._ But they remain locked behind the cage of her teeth.

He nods and stretches out onto his back, turning his gaze toward the sky. “When I was little, I had this friend. A nurse or nanny or something like that, but I always just thought of her as a friend. She told me that if I was quiet enough, if I needed them enough, the stars would sing to me.”

Byleth stretches out on her back beside him. “Sing to you?” she repeats, almost wincing at the roughness of her neglected voice. She sees him nod out of the corner of her eyes.

“I never knew what she meant. It seemed ridiculous--singing stars. And then...she died.” He sighs.

Now Byleth _does_ wince. There’s still real pain in his voice. For the first time in days, she wants to reach out to someone rather than take shelter alone. Her hand finds his wrist and she squeezes it gently. His lips curve slightly in response, but he keeps his gaze locked onto the stars above.

“She was poisoned,” he tells her. “I was probably the intended target, but...fate had other plans, I suppose.”

Poisoned. Perhaps that explains his interest? But...why would he be the target of a poisoning attempt? Was this before or after Duke Riegan’s son had died? She wants to ask, but her instincts stop her. If she pries too hard he might clam up, and this is the most intimately he’s opened up about his personal history since she’s known him.

“Anyway, I wouldn’t come out of my room for anything, not even to eat. And then one night I just...I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get outside. So I climbed out onto the roof of the pal--of my house. It was raining at first, not that I cared, but...then it started to clear up. The rain stopped and the clouds parted, and I could see the stars. But...for the first time, it was like I could hear them too. I knew I couldn’t _actually_ hear them, of course. It was more like...remembering a lullaby. One of her lullabies, in fact.” He turns his head toward her, looking into her eyes. His wrist slides out of her grasp, but then his fingers curl around hers and that’s so much better. The warmth of him seeps into her, even through her grief, and tears fill her eyes before she could stop them.

“I didn’t feel so lost, after that. Or so alone. And I...I want _you_ to know that you’re not alone.” His smile reaches his eyes, and it's all for her, and the tears begin to slip down her cheeks. “I want you to know that I--that _all_ of your Golden Deer--are with you. And we’ll be with you no matter what.” His fingers squeeze hers. “That’s not just lip service, you know. That’s a promise.”

“I know,” she manages, and she really _does_ know. For the first time, she really knows...she isn’t alone. The Golden Deer aren’t just her students. _Claude_ isn’t just her student. And she will heal. She knows she’ll heal.

“Claude,” she says softly. “I want to kill Monica.”

“I know.” His tone is suddenly grim and his gaze turns back up to the sky...but he doesn’t let go of her hand. “And we’ll be there for you for that, too.”

“Thank you,” she says. “And thank you for…”

He chuckles, warm against the night. “No need to thank me for anything, Teach. This is just what friends do when one of them is in need.”

_Friends._ The word sticks with her, steals away some of the pain she’s been wrapped in for days on end. But it isn’t...enough.

_It has to be, for now,_ Sothis warns her, though Byleth isn’t sure she understands. The goddess only says, _You will._ Then Byleth falls asleep hand in hand with Claude under the starry sky. Just before she drifts away, she knows that she wakes again, she will have to start living once more. But she can do it...she can do it with Claude at her side. It is that thought that soothes her into dreaming.


End file.
